I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I find relicing a brand new instrument very fake - like making a brand new antique table by letting your kid trace drawings with a ball point pen on it, or wacking it with a chain. On the other hand, I am actually intimidated by a brand new perfect, very expensive guitar to the point where I shy away from them. I very much like the look and feel of a typical 50 year old instrument that's been played and loved. Exactly what relic's try to emulate. Weird. If you buy a heavy relic Stratocaster from the Fender Custom Shop for $everal grand, do you then keep it in the case and baby it so it stays pristinely relic'd?

I did 'antique' a partsocaster once at the customer's request. It was sort of fun. The trick to making it look real is to do a nice job with the finish to begin with, and then do stuff that mimics real wear. Dan Erlywine did an article on it in 'American Lutherie' once, and I pretty much followed that. The way you get the finish to craze to begin with is to break the old painter's 'fat over lean' rule by putting a hard finish over a soft sealer. Then, when you abuse it the finish can't move with the surface and cracks. I used a 'crackle glaze undercoat; more or less latex base, under shellac. When it was done I put mine it in the freezer over night. When I toook it out the next morning you could watch the cracks run across the surface. A wash of walnut stain made them really show up.

In the end, though, the cuustomers always do a much better job of it than I could, so I leave it to them for the most part.